The Existence of God

Comparison of what is inferior to what is better in all aspects of experience, tied to a logical thought process and the employment of human reason in a systematic contemplation of ever-progressive perfection, is in the background of Anselm's proof of the existence of God. This is how the argument runs: If it is true that one thing can be thought of as better than another, does it not follow that there might be one thing that is better than many things? And if that is true, does it not follow that there might be one thing that is better than all things? If it is true that there is this one thing that is better and more perfect than all things, then it remains to identify that thing. Or, as Anselm prefers to suggest, it remains to contemplate the existence of that thing.

It is in this way that one may arrive at the statement that

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cal theologians make in Kant's opinion is in jumping from assigning a meaning to the notion of perfection and completeness and calling it God, to asserting something that is true about that meaning (that God necessarily exists). Just because human beings can conceive of the notion of absolute perfection does not prove that there exists any being of that category. Kant is saying that the advocates of the ontological proof of God's existence are skipping a step in their logic, which is to explore the content of the construction of a notion of unattainable completeness, perfection, or unconditionality: "It is precisely these conditions that we desire to know, in order that we may determine whether or not, in resorting to this concept, we are thinking anything at all" (Kant, p. 41). Without knowing what that concept entails, it is logically incorrect to jump to the conclusion that a perfect being exists, or to conclude that it is impossible for the contemplation that such a being does not exist to overtake the first conclusion. Kant also rejects the arguments about God's necessary-existence-because-perfection by analogy, such as the idea that every triangle necessarily has three angles. He says that geometrical propositions are "synt
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Approximate Word count = 1363
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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